Margarita Castaneda, CND

Advance photo/Michael McWeeneyAs director of the religious education program at St. Mary of the Assumption parish in Port Richmond, Sister Margarita is close to many immigrant families.
It’s just shy of 4 on a Friday afternoon and a dozen teens have settled into their seats for religious education class at St. Mary of the Assumption parish in Port Richmond.

Sister Margarita Castaneda helps them open their Bibles to Genesis, the story of creation, and asks Marcelo, a lanky 15-year-old in khaki shorts and navy blue Nikes, to read aloud. He fumbles with a heavy gold crucifix around his neck as he reads the passage where Adam and Eve disobey God.

“Just like Adam and Eve, you’re going to be tempted to make the wrong choices,” Sister Margarita follows up. “What will you do?”

“Just say ‘no,’” Marcelo answers.

“Right,” Sister Margarita validates.

Her lesson is more survival than catechism for these teens of St. Mary’s, a parish surrounded by drugs, alcoholism, prostitution and gunfire. Many of them are the children of undocumented Mexican immigrants who have come to know Sister Margarita not just as a teacher, but as their lifeline.

ONE OF THEIR OWN

Her primary parish title is director of religious education, and in the eight years she’s worked at St. Mary’s, enrollment in the bilingual after-school and Sunday classes has soared from 30 to 300. So has attendance at the Spanish Mass.

But Sister Margarita’s role at St. Mary’s — and in Port Richmond — goes much deeper. Half-Mexican herself and fluent in Spanish with a gentle, non-judgmental style, she easily earns the trust of immigrants struggling with poverty, addiction and the threat of deportation. She knows their customs, respects their values, understands their fears.

She coordinates the parish program that collects and distributes clothing and furniture to needy Mexican families, and advises Las Senoras de Santa Maria, the parish organization that trains Mexican women as cleaning ladies to service Staten Island households.

The families who benefit from Sister Margarita’s work embrace her as one of their own. She gets invited to their baptisms, communions, weddings and family gatherings.

“I party hop a lot,” she says with a laugh.

READY TO STEP IN

She helps 15-year-old girls of the parish prepare for Quinceanera (from the Spanish quince anos, or “15 years”), a coming-of-age celebration that includes a retreat, a Mass and a party. She appreciates the significance of this Mexican custom because she experienced her own Quinceanera as a teen growing up in Manhattan.

A few weeks ago, Sister Margarita heard about a Port Richmond family that could not afford a Quinceanera. The young girl’s father had been arrested for beating her mother and withholding food from their five children. He had been deported to Mexico.

Sister Margarita stepped in. She took the girl to Macy’s and treated her to a dress and shoes with a gift card she had received as a donation.

“There are lots of families like that,” she says matter-of-factly. “My phone is always ringing. Someone is always knocking at my door.” Gift cards to Pathmark and Macy’s are the best donations Sister Margarita can receive. She puts them to use right away.

“Many of these people have no income,” she says with empathy. “They are living one family to a room. They are desperate.”

She knows alcoholism is the root of many family problems in the community. She helps women too frightened to report domestic abuse find shelter and legal assistance. Sometimes the men seek her help for their addictions and violence.

She has seen the drug dealers doing business in the parish courtyard at night and the prostitutes gathering in a nearby coffee shop on Sunday mornings.

Sister Margarita knows the Mexicans are too afraid to speak up about these illegal activities on their streets and in their buildings. They fear reprisal or deportation. They keep quiet.

“It’s the Mexican custom: Don’t get involved,” she explains.

So she speaks up on their behalf, a voice for the voiceless. When she sees drug dealers and prostitutes in the neighborhood, she contacts the district attorney’s office, which responds promptly to her tips. In the last few months, Sister Margarita’s tips have shuttered three houses of prostitution in Port Richmond.

“My eyes cannot be closed when I drive through the neighborhood,” she says. “The D.A.’s office supports my efforts in keeping parishioners safe.”

Sister Margarita was born on Manhattan’s Upper East Side “with a silver spoon in my mouth,” she says apologetically. Her father was a Mexican immigrant who worked his way up from bus boy to manager at the Grand Central Oyster Bar before establishing an upholstery business.

“He was a handsome man — and a good gabber,” she smiles. Her mother was German.

She lived in Mexico City for a few years as a child, starting elementary school there. Returning to Manhattan, she graduated from St. Jean Baptiste High School on East 75th Street, which is operated by the Congregation of Notre Dame (CND), an order of nuns based in Montreal.

At 17, she decided to enter the congregation. Her father signed the consent form, but her mother disapproved. “She wanted grandchildren,” Sister Margarita realizes now.

The decision to become a nun came naturally, but not without sacrifice. “I stopped smoking and drinking, and gave up my boy friend,” she confides. She made her final vows as a sister of the Congregation of Notre Dame on Aug. 24, 1960, at the age of 19.

She came to Staten Island to begin her studies at the former Notre Dame College on Grymes Hill, and earned a bachelor’s degree in history and Spanish from Fairfield University in 1967. She held teaching assignments in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and at her alma mater, St. Jean Baptiste. Along the way, she added two master’s degrees to her resume.

In the late-1970s, while teaching at St. Jean’s, Sister Margarita and another CND nun converted an old convent in East Harlem, then one of New York’s toughest neighborhoods, into a halfway house for women just released from prison. Sister Margarita lived with the women — some of them drug addicts and convicted murderers — and counseled them.

Other jobs have taken her to Paterson, N.J.; Manchester, N.H.; North Augusta, S.C., and Leferia, Texas.

ROLE MODEL FOR WOMEN

Fearing little and embracing change, Sister Margarita digs her heels in and gets to work with each new assignment.

It took a diagnosis of colon cancer in 1988 to slow her down — and only temporarily. She underwent surgery and a year of intense chemotherapy that made her so weak, her CND sisters discussed arrangements for her funeral.

“They thought I was dying. But it wasn’t my time yet, so here I am,” she says with a characteristic glass-half-full attitude. She believes her CND sisters prayed her back to health.

Sister Margarita’s ongoing mission is to empower the Mexican women of her parish, as they look to her as a role model.

“Many of these women have a poor self-image,” she says. “They need to learn to stand on their own, to earn money to be independent.”-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Birthday:

March 28, 1941, Manhattan.

SHARES A BIRTHDAY WITH

Reba McEntire Actress, singer, March 28, 1955.

Education

St. Jean Baptiste High School, Manhattan; bachelor’s degree from the former Notre Dame College, Grymes Hill; master’s degree in Spanish from Middlebury (Vt.) College; master’s degree in religious studies from St. Joseph’s College, West Hartford, Conn.

Family

Daughter of the late Jose and Frances Castaneda. One sister, Christine Castaneda.

Most proud of

Her Mexican-German heritage.Typical Saturday

There is no typical Saturday. She may facilitate clothing and furniture donations, catch up on religious education paperwork at St. Mary’s, or attend a wedding or a Quin-ceanera (coming-of-age party for 15-year-old girls).

Three wishes

A better understanding of new immigrants in the United States.

Peace in the Middle East and an end to war.

To see more young women respond to God’s call.

Last book read

“The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day,” by Robert Ellsberg.

Favorite movie

Recently enjoyed seeing “Julie and Julia.”

Biggest regret

No regrets!

Happiest moments

Meeting her former pupils and seeing how much they’ve done with their lives."Many of these women have a poor self-image. They need to learn to stand on their own, to earn money to be independent.” -- Sr. Margarita Castaneda